MHUG ConferenceMunicipality employees deal with complex processes every day whether they are handling planning applications or scheduling and processing the results of property inspections. Most tasks require consolidating information from various departments. Information requests like those submitted through the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) can also quickly become time-consuming for local government employees.
How can municipalities ensure that information is processed fast and effectively without cutting corners? Help is available through customized software equipped with powerful dashboard capabilities. Here is a closer look.
What A Dashboard Can Do
Dashboards are an integral part of modern municipality software products. In fact, they are the key to understanding and interpreting the data delivered by the software. Dashboards are designed to display information in a format that is easy to understand and digest. With FastTrackGov® (FTG), the software’s dashboard also functions as a hub from which employees can access all the details they need.
Traditionally, collaborating across departments required retrieving paper files on cases, collating the information, comparing details, and working through variances.
Dashboards like the one FTG has will give your entire team access to all the data they need, no matter which municipality department they belong to. Dashboards pull data from different sources and process it to make it more accessible.
They deliver actionable data to team members and municipality leaders. Dashboards have been designed to visualize complex processes, allowing employees and leadership teams to understand complex data within minutes.
Three Types of Dashboards
Industry insiders often distinguish between three different types of dashboards, depending on which needs they address.
- Operational dashboards monitor daily operations and are ideal for accessing real-time information. These dashboards facilitate immediate action and are excellent tools for increasing efficiency across the organization.
- Analytical dashboards focus on delivering deeper insights than strictly operational dashboards would do. These dashboards allow users to analyze long-term trends and work well when your team needs to compare data from an extended period.
- Strategic dashboards monitor whether your current actions are aligned with your organization’s long-term goals.
Where Does FTG’s Dashboard Fit?
FTG comes with a highly flexible dashboard that can be customized to your individual users. That means your team does not need to choose one type of dashboard over another. By contrast, our team will work with your team to determine which functionality you need and tailor the software to those needs.
How Dashboards and Reports Compare
Visualizing information is not a new requirement for municipalities. Local government offices have been using different forms of reports for decades to make it easier to understand complex processes.
However, dashboards can achieve more than even sophisticated reports do. Most reports tend to focus on limited aspects of complex processes like building applications and licensing. They struggle to display the full picture and instead hone in on details. While this may be useful in some cases, numerous municipality-related applications call for a broader view of high-level data. That is when dashboards outperform reports.
Use Cases for Dashboards in Municipalities
No two municipalities will have the same requirements for their software. Still, there are several common use cases for FTG’s dashboard.
1. Dashboards and OPRA Requests
Municipalities in New Jersey regularly handle information requests under the state’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA). This law provides requestors with a statutory right to access public records. Any limitations to access need to be treated in favor of the public.
Simply put, the law puts pressure on municipalities to deliver detailed data in response to OPRA inquiries. Inquiries can be filed by any citizen, whether they live in New Jersey or not. Requests can also be filed anonymously to encourage members of the public to ask for information from government offices.
OPRA has replaced the previous ‘Right to Know Law’, and there is no limit to the number of OPRA requests any citizen can file. As a result, municipalities may be dealing with numerous requests at any given time. Those requests have the potential to limit employees’ productivity significantly.
2. Multi-Department Projects
Dashboards simplify municipal projects involving multiple departments. Cross-departmental collaborations could previously be fraught with the danger of information getting lost or duplicated. By keeping data in a central place and giving employees access to that information, the likelihood of data being lost or unintentionally duplicated is minimized.
Employees can work from their individual workstations and contribute to the collaboration. Other team members immediately see updates and can be sure they are working on the latest version of a project.
Dashboards allow government agencies to deliver multi-department projects in a fraction of the time and with greater accuracy.
3. Increased Overall Productivity
Dashboards are integral to FTG’s capacity to increase employee productivity across all departments. Municipalities have to manage incredible workloads with limited budgets and relatively small teams.
Maximizing employee productivity is a priority for many municipal leaders, and dashboards help with that by simplifying access to detailed levels of information and giving your team the tools they need to turn large datasets into customizable and intuitive graphics.
Productivity rises even further as dashboards deliver accurate forecasts that support better decision-making and problem-solving processes.
Why FTG’s Dashboard Excels in Municipalities
FTG’s dashboard combines all the advantages of dashboards utilized in different software applications, and it is customized to public sector applications.
Our team will train your team in the use of dashboards to compile complex datasets and transform them into outstanding, easy-to-understand visualizations. FTG makes it easy to answer OPRA requests and significantly shortens the time your team needs to gather the information required to address those requests.
The visualizations delivered by FTG’s dashboard allow your team to make complex information accessible without losing access to critical details. Pie charts and other diagrams help your audience understand even difficult processes and enable team leaders to walk away with actionable insights.
Schedule a demo today and discover the FTG dashboard difference.